Heat Transfer of Supercritical Carbon Dioxide in Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger Geometries

Author(s):  
Alan Kruizenga ◽  
Mark Anderson ◽  
Roma Fatima ◽  
Michael Corradini ◽  
Aaron Towne ◽  
...  

The increasing importance of improving efficiency and reducing capital costs has led to significant work studying advanced Brayton cycles for high temperature energy conversion. Using compact, highly efficient, diffusion-bonded heat exchangers for the recuperators has been a noteworthy improvement in the design of advanced carbon dioxide Brayton cycles. These heat exchangers will operate near the pseudocritical point of carbon dioxide, making use of the drastic variation of the thermophysical properties. This paper focuses on the experimental measurements of heat transfer under cooling conditions, as well as pressure drop characteristics within a prototypic printed circuit heat exchanger. Studies utilize type-316 stainless steel, nine channel, semi-circular test section, and supercritical carbon dioxide serves as the working fluid throughout all experiments. The test section channels have a hydraulic diameter of 1.16 mm and a length of 0.5 m. The mini-channels are fabricated using current chemical etching technology, emulating techniques used in current diffusion-bonded printed circuit heat exchanger manufacturing. Local heat transfer values were determined using measured wall temperatures and heat fluxes over a large set of experimental parameters that varied system pressure, inlet temperature, and mass flux. Experimentally determined heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop data are compared to correlations and earlier data available in literature. Modeling predictions using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package FLUENT are included to supplement experimental data. All nine channels were modeled using known inlet conditions and measured wall temperatures as boundary conditions. The CFD results show excellent agreement in total heat removal for the near pseudocritical region, as well as regions where carbon dioxide is a high or low density fluid.

Author(s):  
Alan Kruizenga ◽  
Mark Anderson ◽  
Roma Fatima ◽  
Michael Corradini ◽  
Aaron Towne ◽  
...  

The increasing importance of improving efficiency and reducing capital costs has lead to significant work studying advanced Brayton cycles for high temperature energy conversion. Using compact, highly efficient, diffusion-bonded heat exchangers for the recuperators, has been a noteworthy improvement in the design of advanced carbon dioxide Brayton Cycles. These heat exchangers will operate near the pseudocritical point of carbon dioxide, making use of the drastic variation of the thermo-physical properties. This paper focuses on the experimental measurements of heat transfer under cooling conditions, as well as pressure drop characteristics within a prototypic printed circuit heat exchanger. Studies utilize type-316 stainless steel, nine channel, semi-circular test section, and supercritical carbon dioxide serves as the working fluid throughout all experiments. The test section channels have a hydraulic diameter of 1.16mm and a length of 0.5m. The mini-channels are fabricated using current chemical etching technology, emulating techniques used in current diffusion bonded printed circuit heat exchanger manufacturing. Local heat transfer values were determined using measured wall temperatures and heat fluxes over a large set of experimental parameters that varied system pressure, inlet temperature, and mass flux. Experimentally determined heat transfer coefficients and pressure drop data are compared to correlations and earlier data available in literature. Modeling predictions using the CFD package FLUENT are included to supplement experimental data. All nine channels were modeled using known inlet conditions and measured wall temperatures as boundary conditions. The FLUENT results show excellent agreement in total power removal for the near pseudocritical region, as well as regions where carbon dioxide is a high or low density fluid.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiangfeng Guo ◽  
Xiulan Huai

A printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) was selected as the recuperator of supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) Brayton cycle, and the segmental design method was employed to accommodate the rapid variations of properties of S-CO2. The local heat capacity rate ratio has crucial influences on the local thermal performance of PCHE, while having small influences on the frictional entropy generation. The heat transfer entropy generation is far larger than the frictional entropy generation, and the total entropy generation mainly depends on the heat transfer entropy generation. The axial conduction worsens the thermal performance of PCHE, which becomes more and more obvious with the increase of the thickness and thermal conductivity of plate. The evaluation criteria, material, and size of plate have to be selected carefully in the design of PCHE. The present work may provide a practical guidance on the design and optimization of PCHE when S-CO2 is employed as working fluid.


Author(s):  
Joshua Schmitt ◽  
David Amos ◽  
Jayanta Kapat

The goal of this study is to design and assess the effectiveness of a micro-channel recuperator using supercritical carbon dioxide as a working fluid. A one-dimensional thermal analysis is performed for a micro-channel recuperator suitable for a Brayton cycle with a nominal 100 MW class turbomachine. The impact of supercritical carbon dioxide properties near the critical point on the thermal performance of the recuperator is studied in detail. The cycle parameters are first obtained from an overall cycle analysis. Two adjacent flow passages with square cross-section in counter-flow configuration are considered for this analysis along with appropriate symmetry. The high pressure of SCO2 is also addressed and the structural stresses on the micro-channel walls are analyzed. Only the axial temperature variations in the hot stream and the cold stream are considered in the one-dimensional analysis. Each channel is discretized in the axial direction. Axial conduction through the wall is included in the energy balance. Of particular interest in this analysis is the variation of transport properties of the CO2 working fluid as thermodynamic conditions approach the critical point. These property variations are provided to the computer code through the REFPROP database. Over the length of the heat exchanger local changes in Reynolds number, Nusselt number, and heat transfer coefficient are charted. From the results of the heat transfer calculations, the log mean temperature difference and heat exchange effectiveness of the heat exchanger is calculated. Using the code to produce multiple results, the optimum heat exchanger design is found. Recommendations on the manufacturing method of a micro-channel recuperator are made.


Author(s):  
Wen Fu ◽  
Xizhen Ma ◽  
Peiyue Li ◽  
Minghui Zhang ◽  
Sheng Li

Printed circuit heat exchangers are considered for use as the intermediate heat exchangers (IHXs) in high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), molten salts reactors (MSRs) and other advanced reactors. A printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) is a highly integrated plate-type compact heat exchanger with high-temperature, high-pressure applications and high compactness. A PCHE is built based on the technology of chemical etching and diffusion bonding. A PCHE with supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) as the working fluid was designed in this study based on the theory correlations. Three-dimensional numerical analysis was then conducted to investigate the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of supercritical CO2 in the designed printed circuit heat exchanger using commercial CFD code, FLUENT. The distributions of temperature and velocity through the channel were modeled. The influences of Reynolds number on heat transfer and pressure drop were analyzed. The numerical results agree well with the theory calculations.


Author(s):  
Anton V. Moisseytsev ◽  
James J. Sienicki ◽  
David C. Wade

Recent development of the Secure Transportable Autonomous Reactor-Liquid Metal (STAR-LM) lead-cooled natural circulation fast reactor (LFR) has been directed at coupling to an advanced power conversion system that utilizes a gas turbine Brayton cycle with supercritical carbon dioxide (S-CO2) as the working fluid. A key ingredient in achieving a coupled plant having a high efficiency are the modular lead-to-CO2 heat exchangers that must fit within the available volume inside the reactor vessel and must heat the S-CO2 to a high temperature. Thermal hydraulic performance and feasibility of seven different heat exchanger concepts has been investigated with respect to the achievement of a suitably high Brayton cycle efficiency for the coupled LFR-S-CO2 plant. The relative merits of the different heat exchanger configurations are revealed by the analysis which provides a basis to select the most promising concepts for further development.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chien-Yuh Yang ◽  
Kun-Chieh Liao

This paper provides an experimental investigation of heat transfer and pressure drop of supercritical carbon dioxide cooling in a microchannel heat exchanger. An extruded flat aluminum tube with 37 parallel channels and each channel of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm cross section was used as the test section. The temperature drops of supercritical CO2 cooled inside the test section were controlled at 2 °C, 4 °C, and 8 °C separately for each test to investigate the effect of property change on the friction and heat transfer performance at various temperature cooling ranges near the critical point. The test results showed that while the test conditions were away from the critical point, both heat transfer and pressure drop performance agreed very well with those predicted by conventional correlations. However, for the test conditions near the critical point, the difference between those of the test results and the predicted values is very high. Both heat transfer and pressure drop were strongly affected by the ranges of temperature cooling in the test section while they were near the critical conditions. Since there is a drastic peak of the property change near the critical point, if we use the properties integrated but not averaged from inlet to the exit temperatures, we obtain the results that agree well with the values predicted by conventional correlations. The heat transfer and pressure drop performance of supercritical carbon dioxide in microchannels with size near 0.5 mm are indeed similar to these at normal conditions if its properties are appropriately evaluated.


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